Amal Sabrie stood at her approach. “You look—” she began.
—like shit. Becker hadn’t slept in three days. It shouldn’t have shown; cyborgs don’t get tired.
“I mean,” Sabrie continued smoothly, “I thought the augments would be more conspicuous.”
Great wings, spreading from her shoulders and laying down the wrath of God. Corporal Nandita Becker, Angel of Death.
“They usually are. They come off.”
Neither extended a hand. They sat.
“I guess they’d have to. Unless you sleep standing up.” A thought seemed to occur to her. “You sleep, right?”
“I’m a cyborg, Ms. Sabrie. Not a vacuum cleaner.” An unexpected flicker of irritation, there; a bright spark on a vast dark plain. After all these flat waking hours Becker almost welcomed it.
Monahan didn’t. Too hostile. Dial it down.
Sabrie didn’t miss a beat. “A cyborg who can flip cars one-handed. If the promos are to be believed.”
Be friendly. Give a little. Don’t make her pull teeth.
Okay.
Becker turned in her seat, bent her neck so the journalist could glimpse the tip of the black enameled centipede bolted along her backbone. “Spinal and long-bone reinforcement to handle the extra weight. Wire-muscle overlays, store almost twenty Joules per cc.” There was almost a kind of comfort in rattling off the mindless specs. “Couples at over seventy percent under most—”
A little, Corporal.
“Anyway.” Becker shrugged, straightened. “Most of the stuff’s inside. The rest’s plug and play.” She took a breath, got down to it. “I should tell you up front I’m not authorized to talk about mission specifics.”
Sabrie shrugged. “I’m not here to ask about them. I want to talk about you.” She tapped her menu, entered an order for kruggets and a Rising Tide. “What’re you having?”
“Thanks. I’m not hungry.”
“Of course.” The reporter glanced up. “You do eat, though, right? You still have a digestive system?”
“Nah. They just plug me into the wall.” A smile to show she was kidding.
Now you’re getting it.
“Glad you can still make jokes,” Sabrie said from a face turned suddenly to stone.
Shit. Walked right into that one.
Down in the left hand, a tremor. Becker pulled her hands from the table, rested them on her lap.
“Okay,” Sabrie said at last. “Let’s get started. I have to say I’m surprised Special Forces even let me talk to you. The normal response in cases like this is to refuse comment, double down, wait for a celebrity overdose to move the spotlight.”
“I’m just following orders, ma’am.” The tic in Becker’s hand wouldn’t go away. She clasped her hands together, squeezed.
“So let’s talk about something you can speak to,” Sabrie said. “How do you feel?”
Becker blinked. “Excuse me?”
“About what happened. Your role in it. How do you feel?”
Be honest.
“I feel fucking awful,” she said, and barely kept her voice from cracking. “How am I supposed to feel?”
“Awful,” Sabrie admitted. She held silence for a respectable interval before pressing on. “The official story’s systems malfunction.”
“The investigation is ongoing,” Becker said softly.
“Still. That’s the word from sources. Your augments fired, you didn’t. No mens rea.”
Blobs of false color, spreading out against the sand.
“Do you feel like you killed them?”
Tell her the truth, Monahan whispered.
“I—part of me did. Maybe.”
“They say the augments don’t do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. They just do it faster.”
Six people on a fishing trip in an empty ocean. It didn’t make any fucking sense.
“Is that the way you understand it?” Sabrie pressed. “The brain decides what it’s going to do before it knows it’s decided?”
Becker forced herself to focus, managed a nod. Even that felt a bit shaky, although the journalist didn’t seem to notice. “Like a, a bubble rising from the bottom of a lake. We don’t see it until it breaks the surface. The augs see it—before.”
“How does that feel?”
“It feels like—” Becker hesitated.
Honesty, Corporal. You’re doing great.
“It’s like having a really good wingman sitting on your shoulder, watching your back. Taking out threats before you even see them. Except it’s using your own body to do that. Does that make sense?”
“As much as it can, maybe. To someone who isn’t augged themselves.” Sabrie essayed a little frown. “Is that how it felt with Tionee?”
“Who?”
“Tionee Anoka. Reesi Eterika. Io—” She stopped at something she saw in Becker’s face.
“I never knew,” Becker said after a moment.
“Their names?”
Becker nodded.
“I can send you the list.”
A waiter appeared, deposited a tumbler and a steaming platter of fluorescent red euphausiids in front of Sabrie; assessed the ambiance and retreated without a word.
“I didn’t—” Becker closed her eyes. “I mean yes, it felt the same. At first. There had to be a threat, right? Because the augs—because I fired. And I’d be dead at least four times over by now if I always waited until I knew what I was firing at.” She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Only this time things started to—sink in afterward. Why didn’t I see them coming? Why weren’t the—”
Careful, Corporal. No tac.
“Some of them were still—moving. One of them was talking. Trying to.”
“To you?”
Up in ultraviolet, the textured glass of the table fractured the incident sunlight into tiny rainbows. “No idea.”
“What did they say?” Sabrie poked at her kruggets but didn’t eat.
Becker shook her head. “I don’t speak Kiribati.”
“All those augments and you don’t have realtime translation?”
“I—I never thought of that.”
“Maybe those smart machines saw the bubbles rising. Knew you wouldn’t want to know.”
She hadn’t thought of that either.
“So you feel awful,” Sabrie said. “What else?”
“What else am I feeling?” The tremor had spread to both hands.
“If it’s not too difficult.”
What the fuck is this he said I’d be steady he said the drugs—
“They gave me propranolol.” It was almost a whisper, and Becker wondered immediately if she’d crossed the line. But the voice in her head stayed silent.
Sabrie nodded. “For the PTSD.”
“I know how that sounds. It’s not like I was a victim or anything.” Becker stared at the table. “I don’t think it’s working.”
“It’s a common complaint, out there on the cutting edge. All those neurotransmitters, synthetic hormones. Too many interactions. Things don’t always work the way they’re supposed to.”
Monahan, you asshole. You’re the goddamn PR expert, you should’ve known I wasn’t up for this...
“I feel worse than awful.” Becker could barely hear her own voice. “I feel sick...”
Sabrie appraised her with black unblinking eyes.
“This may be bigger than an interview,” she said at last. “Do you think we could arrange a couple of follow-ups, maybe turn this into an in-depth profile piece?”